


Calenhad and Aldenon

by DeCarabas



Series: Fugitives Together [27]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Act 3, Blue Hawke, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 17:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6386410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeCarabas/pseuds/DeCarabas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On dubious potions, nations driven to the brink of war, and legendary heroes who give up their titles to run off with rebel mages. </p><p>Or, Hawke and Anders attend a play.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calenhad and Aldenon

Hightown’s grand theatre is a confection of carved wooden faces and flaking gold paint, built to flatter one of the old Orlesian viscounts. Hawke’s mother used to enjoy it. Good acoustics, she’d said. He’s not sure he’d know the difference. And it’s been a long while since he’s come back here, but the play tonight is ostensibly in the Champion’s honor. The legend of Calenhad, the Fereldan who rose from obscurity to greatness.

Hawke suspects it has less to do with him and more to do with the sudden Fereldan fad among the nobles in the wake of King Alistair’s visit. Watching Meredith and the king of the dog lords practically fighting in the streets had been the most entertaining thing to happen in Hightown in weeks, and suddenly everyone’s wearing Fereldan-style braids and adopting puppies. He just hopes they don’t tire of the puppies when the fad passes.

There’s a girl by the door with a jar for donations and a cluster of white flowers in her hands—not lilies. Small and simple blossoms, and there are more of them threaded through buttonholes or worn on wrists here and there throughout the crowd.

“A flower for the Blight refugees, messeres?”

“Are you with Lirene?” Hawke asks as he drops some coins in the jar, and she hands him a pair of flowers, surprised by the question.

“Who—the Chantry handles all the donations, messere.”

And Anders looks like he’s stepped in sewage, except Hawke’s seen him dig through sewage and that doesn’t bother him half as much. But he takes the flower Hawke hands him as the crowd pushes them further into the theatre.

“I can imagine how they _handle_ the donations,” Anders says, twirling the flower between thumb and fingertip. “Have you ever seen a Chantry sister in the camps? And if the templars are in Darktown, they’re sure not there to hand out charity.”

Hawke’s heard the sisters in the Hightown chantry speak of ministering to the refugees, though he hasn’t been back there since his mother’s cremation. And though he can’t picture any of them setting foot in Darktown, he’s seen them around Lowtown often enough. They generally seem earnest about it. He can’t imagine they’re just pocketing the donation money, or using it to put up another statue. But he’s only ever seen them offer prayers; and he would have been a lot happier if Lirene were the one managing the donations, making sure the money went where it would do the most good.

He tucks his own flower into place. “Ah, well. Call it a show of solidarity.”

“A show of hypocrisy, more like. Doing their hair up to look like the queen and pretending that means they’ve done something about the Blight.” Anders is going to shred that flower’s stem at this rate. Anders realizes it at the same moment, looking down at his hand and stilling his fingers. Then he shrugs and lets go, lets the flower fall to the floor. “And plays about Calenhad. Because our legends are so much more palatable than our reality.”

The crowd pushes and pulls against them, and Hawke slides his arm around Anders’ waist, sticking close. “I’m sure Varric would have something to say about that. Power of stories and all.” And half the work that’s come his way over the years has to do with the stories Varric tells about him; maybe Calenhad’s legend will do something similar for the Fereldans, throw a little more work their way. It’s worth hoping for, anyway.

And then there’s a red-faced man with a too-wide smile pushing forward to greet the Champion like an old friend, and Hawke’s not entirely certain whether he ought to recognize him or not, or any of the nobles who come after. But the upper level of the theatre is divided into boxes with the illusion of privacy, and the show makes for a nice distraction from Meredith and Orsino and that terrifying potion that Anders keeps talking about, and the trip to the Bone Pit that he keeps trying to put off—and Maker, how selfish is he? He should be happy for Anders; if that potion is really what Anders wants then he should be doing everything in his power to help, not stalling for time. But the thought of Anders trying to separate himself makes him sick, thinking about how it could go wrong—or go _right_ , and half of the Anders he knows disappears back into the Fade—

He doesn’t want to think about any of it.

He sits back in his seat, watches the play; the grand drama of Calenhad’s struggle to unite Ferelden. Lots of colorful painted canvases to create sweeping landscapes—ought to be more brown, really—and quite a few people in dog masks. It’s only toward the end of the first act, when he sees those ‘mabari’ at Calenhad’s side, facing off against the infamous Teyrn Simeon, that he realizes what’s missing.

He leans into Anders. “Where’s Aldenon?” The rebel mage who’d inspired Calenhad to unite the kingdom definitely should have shown up by now—the kingdom’s halfway united already. Though possibly he’d been in the background somewhere and Hawke hadn’t noticed. Mostly there’d been a lot of emphasis on the noble but doomed pining of Lady Shayna, now standing protectively over the prone and helpless Calenhad. There’s a cry from the crowd as she beheads the evil teyrn, complete with a spray of ‘blood’ so strong it spatters the front row. And the curtain falls on the first act.

Anders takes a moment to answer, letting the applause subside enough to talk without shouting. “I haven’t actually been paying that close attention,” he confesses, one side of his lips lifting in a smile. “Got a bit lost in thought.”

“Yeah?” And Hawke raises his eyebrows, waiting for him to go on, but he doesn’t elaborate, and Hawke shrugs. “They can’t have just left Aldenon out,” he says instead. “How are they going to end the story without him? What, Calenhad gives up his title and vanishes together with his closest companion, ensemble member number five?”

“Or maybe one of the mabari.” Anders stands up, stretches, leans on the edge of the balcony, looking down over the audience below. “Not that surprising, is it? Skipping the parts about the apostate? If they tell the story of the Champion a few hundred years from now, I don’t expect I’ll be in it, either. Except maybe as a villain.”

“I think I’d like to see that. How would it work? The evil healer putting out milk for kittens?”

“How about the deceitful mage, seducing our hero and dragging him into depravity?”

“Now that, I really _would_ like to see.” He wraps his arms around Anders from behind, rests his chin on his shoulder and watches the people milling about below. Feels the tension in Anders, the stiff line of his back. “Maybe not the deceitful part,” he amends. “No one would buy it. No one who’s ever gambled with you, anyway. You’re a terrible liar.”

“You’re forgetting, I know you. I’d know exactly what kind of lies would put you off balance. You’d never think to question it.”

He tilts his head, studying Anders’ profile. “Put some thought into this life of villainy, have you?” Sounds like mage underground business bothering him again, with all its grating little secrets between them. So many things Hawke can’t be told of, just so he’ll be able to look Meredith in the eye and be sure that he won’t accidentally give anything away, won’t give her the excuse she’s itching for to lock up the inconvenient apostate-turned-Champion. She’ll find that excuse sooner or later, he has no doubt; but Anders just keeps trying to delay it.

He leans in, presses a kiss beneath Anders’ ear, and Anders tips his head to the side, giving him more room. His hands come down over Hawke’s arms, tight, holding him in place.

“And you—they’ll forget you were a mage at all, I expect,” Anders says, looking down at the crowd below, the people looking back up at them. “Wouldn’t be hard. Half the rumors I hear already have you swinging a sword. Like that damn statue. Give this city a chance, and they’ll twist you around and make you into whatever they want you to be.”

“What I am is _yours_. Any story of the Champion they tell, the Darktown Healer’s always going to steal the show. Just look at Lady Shayna. People love a good love story.” _And you deserve better than to think of yourself as a villain, even as a joke._

“Shayna dies in the end, love. Also, she nearly destroyed Ferelden.”

He’d forgotten about that. It’s been a while since he last heard the whole Calenhad story; he’s always preferred the parts about the rebel mage. “It’s not a perfect metaphor,” he admits.

Aldenon doesn’t make an appearance in the second act, either. No mention of his fight against the Circle, the king’s beloved friend turned fugitive.

Instead, it’s a story of dubious potions and a country driven to the brink of war, and grief over Lady Shayna that sends Calenhad vanishing into the wilderness. And the curtain closes to ringing applause; but Hawke liked the version he grew up with, where the story kept going and it wasn’t grief that drove Calenhad from his throne in the end, it was the search for Aldenon, a man who meant more to him than his whole kingdom.

Varric would like the play, he thinks. Kirkwall’s got a taste for tragedy.

But as a show in honor of Ferelden, it’s a bit backwards. Fereldan legends never die, they just vanish into the mists, leaving the hope that they’re still out there somewhere, living and loving and having more grand adventures.

Ending the story with Calenhad grieving just leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

* * *

Hawke takes a book down from the library shelves when they get home, carries it back to the fireplace to read by. _The Recollections of Ser Devith, Banner Knight of King Calenhad._ While he’s paging through it, Anders settles in against his side, lifts Hawke’s arm and drapes it over his own shoulders as he stretches out.

Aldenon’s name catches his eye halfway through. The argument that drove him and the king apart for a time—or permanently, depending on which version he believed.

_Aldenon was in a fury such as I've never seen. He wanted a kingdom of free men, of moral people beholden to law. Where a common man could tend his land safely and in peace. He lifted his staff and his voice echoed through the hills: “A civilization cannot be civil if it condones the slavery of another. And that is what this Circle is! But by accident of birth, those mages would be free to live, love, and die as they choose. The Circles will break—if it be one year, a decade, a century, or beyond. Tyrants always fall, and the downtrodden always strive for freedom!”_

He can’t really blame them for leaving this out of the play. He wouldn’t want to risk setting off Meredith’s paranoia either, in their shoes.

There’d been a templar outside the estate when the two of them got home. There always seems to be a templar around these days—not officially there to watch for the apostate Champion, of course. Just patrolling Hightown. Doing their part to keep the peace in these troubled times.

Aldenon had been making speeches like that—how many years ago? Four hundred, five hundred? And the Circles still stand strong.

All that playing nice with the nobility, trying to make himself the living proof that a mage can be trusted to live freely; a few runaways smuggled out of the city; Anders’ manifesto—it seems frail against the weight of all that history.

He finds the passage he was looking for, the part where Calenhad comes to regret their argument. And it’s one of a litany of things on the king’s mind before the abdication; but the core of the story Hawke grew up with is here. Aldenon had been right all along. The Circles were a mistake. Just like the version his father used to tell him and the twins; he can practically hear his father’s voice as he reads.

“That’s how they told it in the Circle, too,” Anders says. “The king gives up his title and runs off to join the rebel mage, all very romantic. But it’s not very realistic, is it? All those people depending on him. He couldn’t really have walked away from them for the sake of one man. No matter how much he might have cared for him.”

“Why not? I would.”

Anders twists to look up at him. “And you say _I’m_ a bad liar.”

Hawke closes the book, puts it aside. “Give the word, and I’ll pack our things. We can go to Rivain. See if the stories about their seers are true. Or, no—even better. Val Royeaux. Let’s go demand justice from the Divine herself.” Now there’s an image, Justice manifesting in the heart of the Grand Cathedral. It would almost certainly get them killed, but it’s a nice fantasy aside from that inconvenient detail. The title of Champion hadn’t been enough to get the Divine to answer his letters about what’s been happening in Kirkwall, just a polite, impersonal response from one of her aides—not really a surprise, there must be any number of nobility writing to her—but he’s willing to bet he could get them an audience if he went in person.

“You have no idea how tempting that sounds, love.” Anders closes his eyes, settles back against him, tugging Hawke’s arm a little closer around him. And then he says, “Bone Pit tomorrow. For the drakestone. Just a little bit more, and it’ll be done.”

Hawke swallows a sigh. “Yeah.” He presses his lips to the top of Anders’ head, and tries not to think too hard about drakestone and potions.

**Author's Note:**

> Aldenon's speech comes from codex entry: [Freedom's Promise.](http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Codex_entry:_Freedom's_Promise)


End file.
